Weekend Box Office: Terrifier 3 Wins Battle of the Killer Clowns

Last week we intimated that the poor response to Joker: Folie a Deux could open the door to a once-in-a-blue-moon shift at the box office. It has also been some time since the top 10 had half of its previous week’s titles replaced with new and expanding titles, not to mention only one of those five titles being from a “major” studio. Let’s not bury the lede here though, because although there are several clowns in the top 10 not named Pennywise, only one of them took the top spot this weekend. And his name is Art.

King of the Crop: Terrifier 3 Wins Battle of the Killer Clowns

Whatever one thinks about the Terrifier films, there is still something worth applauding that a series with its roots could someday lead the nation’s box office. Granted, it is October, and its competition is basically a pro team that had its entire starting lineup put on the IR the week before, but a victory is a victory, and Terrifier 3 is your leader this week. After the first film was crowdfunded (to reportedly less than $60,000) and got a very limited release in 2018, the sequel found a growing audience in 2022. Despite opening to just $805,000 in 770 theaters the weekend of Oct. 7 (a per-theater average of $1,045), Terrifier 2 got into the top 10, tucked just behind the 20th week of Top Gun: Maverick. The film’s total actually increased 28% the following week despite losing 70 of its theaters. The location count went back up in week three, and it increased 70.4% in returns to where it had made over $5 million in 17 days. Theaters more than doubled for the pre-Halloween weekend, and it made another $1.9 million and ultimately grossed $10.6 million on a $250,000 budget.

Terrifier 3 did not mess around this weekend, getting over 2,500 theaters to book it, and it took in $18.8 million with CineVerse’s backing. Lionsgate has not had an opening that big all year. Focus has not had an opening that big since 2022. Bleecker Street has never had an opening that big. With a $2 million budget, whether or not audiences want to return or tell their friends to see it going forward, it’s all gravy at this point. Here are some other horror films doubling their sub-$5 million budgets, tripling it, and then some:

Paranormal Activity 2 ($40.6 million opening / $3 million budget)
The Purge ($34.0 million / $3 million budget)
The Devil Inside ($33.7 million / $1 million budget)
Saw II ($31.7 million / $4 million budget)
Happy Death Day ($26.0 million / $4.8 million budget)
Lights Out ($21.6 million / $4.9 million budget)
The Last Exorcism ($20.3 million / $1.8 million budget)
Hostel ($19.5 million / $4.8 million budget)
Terrifier 3 ($18.8 million / $2 million budget)
Truth or Dare ($18.6 million / $3.5 million budget)
Saw ($18.2 million / $1.2 million budget)
Sinister ($18.0 million / $3 million budget)
Unfriended ($15.8 million / $1 million budget)
The Boy Next Door ($14.9 million / $4 million budget)
Insidious ($13.2 million / $1.5 million budget)
Open Water ($11.4 million / $500,000 budget)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter ($11.1 million / $2.6 million budget)
Barbarian ($10.5 million / $4.5 million budget)
Talk To Me ($10.4 million / $4.5 million budget)
The Lazarus Effect ($10.2 million / $3.3 million budget)

That is a heck of a list to be a part of, and congratulations are in order for the whole Terrifier team for this achievement.

The Top 10 and Beyond: The Wild Robot Holds Strong, Joker Suffers Historic Tumble

Remaining in second place in its third weekend is Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot. The animated film grossed $13.4 million (just a 29% drop) and upped its total to $83.7 million. How is its final estimate holding? The 12th-best 17-day total for a September opening behind Sweet Home Alabama ($84.7 million) and Rush Hour ($84.0 million) is still holding well with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2’s pace. The film had $77.6 million in 17 days after a $13.7 million third weekend. That keeps Wild Robot firmly in the $120-125 million finishing position. There’s good news on the international side as well, after adding over $24 million this weekend. That brings its overseas total to $64.7 million. If our domestic estimate holds, it will only need to get to $75 million to likely ensure a theatrical profit. Plus, a sequel to the film was just announced over the weekend, so good things all around.

The good news for Warner Bros. is that Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a bona fide success and has been for weeks. This weekend it crossed its next milestone, passing $275 million with a $7.3 million weekend. Though Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones had increased its overall divide by almost $3 million, Beetlejuice Deux’s weekend divide has fallen to around $1.4 million over Clones, up from $900,000 in weekend five. So it is going to be a squeaker in getting itself over the $300 million milestone. Globally the film is over $420 million and is not the only film with Burton’s name on it in the top 10 this week. Audiences seem to never miss an opportunity to catch a re-release of Disney’s The Nightmare Before Christmas on the big screen. Marking its third straight yearly re-release in a row, the Henry Selick-directed/Tim Burton-produced classic made its way into the top 10 with $2.3 million in 1,700 theaters. Despite 30 years and 10 re-issues, the film is still chasing $100 million at the domestic box office.

While Terrifier 3 made its own little bit of history this weekend, Joker: Folie a Deux had one for the books. From a $37.8 million opening, which was already more than 60% lower than the original’s start, down to $7.06 million in its second weekend, the math is ugly. That is an 81.4% drop. Independent films drop like that all the time, losing theaters after limited runs usually to make room for new indies in specialized houses. Joker: Folie a Deux is in 4,102 theaters. The highest drop ever for a film in over 3,000 theaters infamously was the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot, which fell 80.4% from $40.5 million down to $7.9 million. Last year, The Marvels set the mark for a release in over 4,000 theaters, dropping 78.1% from its $46.1 million start down to $10.1 million. Joker: Folie a Deux just set the new watermark for both, and with just $51.6 million domestic, it is going to gross less than The Marvels. Worldwide the film is at $165 million and will ultimately not escape from being one of the biggest bombs of 2024.

The last My Hero Academia film, World Heroes Mission, opened to $6.2 million on Halloween weekend in Oct. 2021. The newest entry, My Hero Academia: You’re Next, began with $3 million this weekend in 1,845 theaters. The 2020 release of Heroes Rising grossed a series high of $13.3 million just before the pandemic struck that year. Each release has increased its presence on the global stage with World Heroes Mission grossing nearly $47 million total. The animated Transformers One finally crossed $100 million worldwide this weekend ($111 million total) but remains both a global and domestic disappointment, grossing just $52.8 million of that in North America. Kiyotaka Oshiyama’s Look Back also made another $239,000 in 162 theaters for a total gross to date of $1.5 million.

Other new releases did not fare too well and even combined could not match Terrifier 3’s gross. Morgan Neville’s $16 million Lego-animated documentary about Pharrell Williams career, Piece by Piece, opened to just $3.8 million this weekend, a good number for any documentary, though maybe less so for one with that price tag. Sony then expanded Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night to 2,309 theaters where it grossed a less than enthusiastic $3.4 million. That’s a rather poor start after two weeks of decent numbers in platform release that is going to leave a lot of its $30 million production budget unaccounted for. Films about show business continue to struggle to find an audience beyond the critics who often respond to them.

Briarcliff, formerly known as Open Road and Global Road, released Michael Moore’s anti-Trump documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 in 2018. It opened to $2.7 million and finished with $6.3 million. This weekend they opened Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, and it started with $1.5 million, more than what it would have made if Trump’s people had successfully sued to block its release.

Outside of the top 10, Speak No Evil made $1.5 million, bringing its domestic total to over $35 million. The Indian action film Vettaiyan grossed $1.2 million and has grossed $2.4 million since showings on Wednesday and Thursday. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance dropped just 17% to gross another $1.11 million for a total of $11.7 million. Marc Forster’s White Bird from Lionsgate grossed $755,000 for a paltry total of just $3 million. The studio’s release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis remains in just 227 theaters in its third week, where it made $230,000 for a total of just $7.3 million and a cost of $120 million Coppola dollars. Deadpool & Wolverine dropped to 990 theaters and grossed $751,000 as it surpassed $635 million.

A24’s release of John Crowley’s We Live In Time with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield made $226,000 in just five theaters. The $45,182 per-theater average is the fourth highest of the year behind Kinds of Kindness, Saturday Night, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Those platform releases clearly did nothing for the first two films, as each will gross less than $10 million total. Good luck to We Live In Time, which will expand further this week and go wider on Oct. 25.

Despicable Me 4 also became the 69th film to gross over $600 million overseas. Overall the film is over $961 million. Every one of the Despicable Me sequels and Minions spinoffs has grossed over $900 million.

On the Vine: Smile 2 Hopes to Outscare Terrifier 2

One horror sequel looks to outdo another next week as Smile 2 should easily take the top spot. The original opened to $22.6 million in 2022 and went on to gross over $105 million. Paramount is hoping for even greater numbers. Also in limited release from Neon is Sean Baker’s Certified Fresh awards contender Anora with Mikey Madison. Roadside releases Titus Kaphar’s Sundance pickup Exhibiting Forgiveness with Andre Holland, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor; that one is also Certified Fresh on the Tomatometer. Also in limited release is Ant Timpson’s charming Bookworm with Elijah Wood and Nell Fisher, about a young girl and her estranged magician father searching for a legendary panther in the wilderness.

Full List of Box Office Results: October 11-13, 2024

1. 76% 89% Terrifier 3 (2024) – $18.8 million ($18.8 million total)

2. 98% 98% The Wild Robot (2024) – $13.4 million ($83.7 million total)

3. 77% 80% Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) – $7.3 million ($275.9 million total)

4. 33% 32% Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) – $7 million ($51.6 million total)

5. 81% 91% Piece By Piece (2024) – $3.8 million ($3.8 million total)

6. 88% 98% Transformers One (2024) – $3.6 million ($52.8 million total)

7. 80% 85% Saturday Night (2024) – $3.4 million ($4.1 million total)

8. 91% 93% My Hero Academia: You're Next (2024) – $3 million ($3 million total)

9. 95% 92% Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – $2.3 million ($2.3 million total)

10. 79% 86% The Apprentice (2024) – $1.58 million ($1.58 million total)

Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast.

[box office figures via Box Office Mojo]

Thumbnail image by ©Cineverse

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